Source: DOJ’s Gallup whistle-blower made bizarre work requests, said he was ‘devout Marxist’

The whistle-blower whose allegations form the basis for a Department of Justice lawsuit against the Gallup polling company made bizarre requests at work, made coworkers nervous and said he was a “devout Marxist,” a senior Gallup official told The Daily Caller.

In mid-August, the DOJ announced it was joining a lawsuit former Gallup staffer Michael Lindley filed in 2009. Lindley alleges that Gallup filed false claims with the federal government on its contracts with the Department of State, the U.S. Mint and other federal agencies.

According to the Gallup official, Lindley worked at the polling firm from Feb. 25, 2008 until July 24, 2009. Before working at Gallup, Lindley was a field organizer in Council Bluffs, Iowa, for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

In his now-DOJ-backed lawsuit, Lindley says his “performance record” while working at Gallup “was exemplary.” Lindley also says his performance at Gallup was “outstanding” and that he was “awarded the maximum pay raise of the employees who were in his ‘entering class.'”

A senior Gallup official told TheDC that Lindley’s claim of being a stellar employee couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Co-workers stopped talking to him because they feared he was recording their conversations,” the official added.

At one point, the Gallup official said, Lindley “made a two million dollar calculation error on a costing spreadsheet.” Lindley also wanted to “work remotely from Brazil” but was “told no.”

“He became angry about this,” the official added.

The same official told TheDC that Lindley “became sullen and angry” when Gallup refused his request to be “paid the same as the managing partner of the Government Division” — a “raise of several hundred thousand dollars.”

Though it’s not in his legal complaint, Lindley has also said he was named Gallup’s “Rookie of the Year.” Lindley’s lawyers havetouted that “Rookie of the Year” statement in press releases. Associated Press reporter Pete Yost and the Washington Post’s Lisa Rein, among others, printed it unchallenged.

But no such award exists at The Gallup Organization.

“We have no such award on a company wide basis,” the senior Gallup official told TheDC, adding that it “might have been something in a small group or something a supervisor said to him, but definitely not a company award.”

The official added that Lindley allegedly described himself to a one-time co-worker as a “devout Marxist.”

Lindley also charges that he was terminated from employment on July 24, 2009, one day after he threatened to report the contents of his allegations against Gallup to the DOJ. According to his lawsuit, he said he told a senior Gallup official on July 23, 2009 “that if Gallup was not going to report these issues to the government, then he would report them to the Department of Justice himself.”

The next day, Lindley says in his lawsuit, he was told “that Gallup was terminating his employment effective immediately” — a decision, according to Lindley, made by Gallup Chief Counsel Steve O’Brien.